Americans are worried about their health. They spend billions of dollars each year buying vitamin and mineral pills hoping to improve their health. But are vitamin and mineral pills better than a good diet? No, according to recent research on the health of people. Actually, we are wasting money for those pills.

More than a million Americans die of heart disease each year. Our poor diet is the number one cause of death. Smoking causes heart disease, but poor diet is the biggest cause of death. Also, many Americans are not exercising enough. We are depending more on cars than ever before.

The May 13, 1996, issue of Time magazine has a surprising report on page 78. The report says that vitamins do improve our health, but we get most of them from food, not pills. A research study of 35,000 middle-aged women showed that those who got a lot of Vitamin E had 62% less heart disease than those who got little Vitamin E. But the researchers were surprised to learn that the healthy group "got their vitamins the old-fashioned way, in food.. . ." Earlier this year two major studies showed that beta-carotene rich foods (carrots, broccoli, etc.) improve health more than pills.

The question is, Why should the same nutrient work when in food and not when in pills? The theory is that vitamins need other things in foods to help them [vitamins] get into the body's cells.

Maybe many of us have been throwing our money away on vitamin and mineral pills! If so, we better go back to God's blueprint [plan] for good health. We need to eat a balanced diet of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains. We can save a lot of money that way.

We need to save money for God's work in these closing days of earth's history. My wife and I gave up all meat when we got married 52 years ago. We quit dairy products 23 years ago. Now at 75 years old we have better health than we did 23 years ago.

In the past doctors recommended drinking milk for strong bones. Now research shows that the high protein in milk causes the body to lose most of the calcium. Doctors now know that exercise makes strong bones. The astronauts who stayed up in space a long time could not stand up when they got back because their bones had became so weak. In a weightless environment the body seemed to think, "I do not need bones now" and began losing the calcium. We get a lot of calcium from green leafy foods.